


Not One For Tears

by Waxwing



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:43:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waxwing/pseuds/Waxwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his ordeal with the "serpents of the north" Thranduil becomes neglectful of his husband-ly duties.<br/>His wife is not pleased.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not One For Tears

She had not thought that there was anything that could make her lord and husband withdraw from her. As a matter of formality the king and queen had separate chambers but usually more often than not he would spend the night in her’s or invite her to his. The king and queen were not permitted to publicly display affection (as testament to their belonging more to the kingdom than to each other) but, until recently, he had made up for his public coldness towards her in spades when they were alone. The trouble was that now they were hardly ever alone. Their day to day duties assured that they were constantly surrounded by advisors and guards and various others in front of whom it would have been inappropriate for her to give voice to her concerns or ask him private questions. Truth be told, if she didn’t know better, she would have thought that he was taking measures to deliberately assure that they were never alone. His already quite full days seemed to have gotten even fuller in the months since he’d returned from a military campaign in the north to such an extent that he always found himself busy well into the night, usually with little odds and ends that he normally would have delegated to his underlings.  
He had returned from the north far earlier than was expected with no fanfare and no word given on rather or not the campaign had been successful. His party had arrived in the middle of the night and she had been angry that no one had woken her until she had learned that the king had instructed the servants not to. When she had gone to his rooms to ask for an explanation she had been stopped at the door by a guard who had then gone inside and returned with her husbands personal physician. The physician had told her in a hushed tone (as though confessing a dirty secret) that the king had “taken some damage” while in the north and did not wish to be seen in his current state. Naturally she had been furious but she had summoned the self control to go back to her rooms instead forcing her way into his and there she had paced and fumed and cursed her husband’s vanity.  
This had happened before. His foolish pride (the one glaring flaw in the otherwise flawless gem that was the man she loved) would not allow her to see him injured. Fortunately, given how difficult it was to injure an elven body and the proficiency of elvish medicine at healing wounds, this little foible of his had had very little affect on their relationship in the past and she had even been able to take it as a sort of compliment that he did not want to appear weak in front of her. Unfortunately, this instance proved to be different than any of his very few past injuries and as weeks went by during which he was not seen in public and did not send for her and the physician would give her no information other than “he is healing normally, my queen, but it may take some time” she went from merely annoyed to very, very worried. His last injury, an arrow wound through his shoulder, had taken only three days to heal.  
She had gotten some relief from her worry when he had finally resumed his duties alongside her but it didn’t take her long to realize that there was something amiss about him. There was a self conscious rigidity to his movements that anyone less familiar with him would have mistaken for the usual formal manner he adopted before his subjects and that rigidity would occasionally, very slightly falter exposing the weariness that it was no doubt meant to conceal. What struck her most was the unfocused glassiness of his eyes, as though he was always looking at something very far away. These irregularities seemed visible only to her, or at least if others noticed they were not bold enough to ask questions. She found herself feeling isolated and trapped between her desperate desire for some explanation and her concern that to demand one would only burden him further when he was already clearly under a great deal of strain (though what sort of strain she could not guess as no injury was visible.) Eventually she decided that her only option was to wait, clearly whatever damage he’d taken in the north was not fully healed but she was sure she need only be patient and he would eventually return to normal, he may even be more inclined to tell her what happened once the evidence of it was no longer plain upon his body.  
In the early days of their arranged marriage she had been grateful for the extreme emotional restraint that they’d both been taught as children because it allowed them to treat each other with at least moderately pleasant, courtly civility despite the lack of affection between them. As that civility warmed and blossomed into something more tender and intimate she grew to resent that emotional scar tissue, realizing that it meant that no matter how much and how deeply they felt for each other there would always be a slight-yet-painful void between them. Neither of them ever mentioned this void to the other but they both felt it and they both knew that they both felt it. The only time either of them was ever brave enough to attempt to close that distance was in the privacy of the conjugal chamber where they could forgo the tender words for which neither of them possessed any natural affinity for tender caresses and deep lingering kisses.  
Their wedding night had been a disappointment, they had both been rigid and mechanical, eager to get the awkward business of bedding someone they barely knew for the sake of obligation out of the way as quickly as possible. As they were together longer and grew to admire and eventually love each other, their couplings became less obligatory ritual and more the physical expression of twin souls yearning to join, reaching out to each other and occasionally managing to just barely touch. She lay awake in her bed, because she was freezing and could not get warm despite the fire in the hearth, and reflected on this and felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. This was the final straw. She was a queen and a warrior, she was not one for tears, she was one for action and then and there she decided that the next night she would act.

**Author's Note:**

> Probably going to be updating this tonight or tomorrow.  
> I tried to give Thranduil's wife a distinctive inner voice, I may or may not have succeeded.  
> I'm not even sure where this fits into the time line so just put it wherever you think it should go.


End file.
